(MONEY Magazine) – Imagine an America where: -- All parents could take time off from their jobs with pay until their children were beyond infancy and enrolled in high-quality day care. -- All children could attend free preschools. -- All grade schoolers would have to master a rigorous core curriculum. -- All young people entering the labor force would have a chance to be groomed for highly paid, skilled jobs. -- All people would have equal access to first-rate health care. Each of these programs is a reality somewhere else in the world. And each could be adapted to work here, assuming there was a national consensus to improve child care, education, job training and health care. Now that Congress and the nation are debating President Clinton's ambitious domestic agenda, the time is right to identify the best ideas from other countries that America might borrow and modify. To that end, Money reporters spent three months and traveled 22,500 miles to scrutinize social and educational programs that experts identified as the world's most effective. We cast critical eyes on parental leave, day care and welfare in Sweden, preschools in France, grade schools in Japan, job apprenticeships in Denmark, and health care in Canada -- and found much worth imitating. We also learned that these programs aren't necessarily expensive; some actually cost less than the deeply flawed patchwork plans we now have in place.